Monthly Archives: August 2015

Agile methods such as Scrum, Kanban and OpenAgile do not require long-term up-front plans. However, many teams desire a long-term plan. This can be thought of as a roadmap or schedule or a release plan. Agile planning helps us build and maintain long-term plans.

Agile Planning Process

The steps to do this are actually very simple:

Write down all the work to be done. In Scrum these are called “Product Backlog Items”, in Kanban “Tasks” and in OpenAgile “Value Drivers”.

Do some estimation of the work items. Many Agile estimation techniques exist including Planning Poker, The Bucket System, Dot Voting, T-Shirt Sizes. These tools can be applied to many types of estimation. There are three kinds of estimation that are important for Agile Planning:

Estimating relative business value. Usually done with the business people including customers and users.

Estimating relative effort. Usually done by the Agile team that will deliver the work.

Estimating team capacity. Also done by the Agile team (this is sometimes called “velocity”).

Create the long-term plan. Use the team capacity estimate and the sum of all the effort estimates to come up with an estimate of the overall time required to do the work. (In Kanban, which doesn’t have an iterative approach, this is a bit more complicated.) Use the business value and effort estimates to determine relative return on investment as a way to put work items in a logical sequence.

Agile planning allows a team to update estimates at any time. Therefore, the techniques used above should not be thought of as a strict sequence. Instead, as the team and the business people learn, the estimates and long-term plan can be easily updated. Scrum refers to this ongoing process at “Product Backlog Refinement”.

Principles of Agile Planning

In order to use Agile planning effectively, people must be aware of and support the principles of Agile planning:

Speed over accuracy. We don’t want to waste time on planning! Planning in and of itself does not deliver value. Instead, get planning done fast and use the actual delivery of your Agile team to adjust plans as you go.

Collaborative techniques. We don’t want to be able to blame individuals if something goes wrong. Instead, we create safe estimation and planning techniques. Inevitably, when an estimate turns out to be wrong, it is impossible to blame a single individual for a “mistake”.

Relative units. We don’t try to estimate and plan based on “real” units such as dollars or hours. Instead, we use ordering, relative estimation and other relative techniques to compare between options. Humans are bad at estimating in absolute units. We are much better at relative estimation and planning.

Affiliated Promotions:

Try our automated online Scrum coach: Scrum Insight - free scores and basic advice, upgrade to get in-depth insight for your team. It takes between 8 and 11 minutes for each team member to fill in the survey, and your results are available immediately. Try it in your next retrospective.

Teams encounter and solve many EP!C challenges as they deliver their Product Backlog items. During Retrospectives, teams may struggle to recall their challenges/learnings and may miss an opportunity to adapt their behaviour for future work cycles.

I thought of two fun ideas to help teams keep this EP!C stuff top of mind:

Get a milk carton with a cut out (call it a “Treasure Chest”), supply some sticky notes and sharpies, and have the team deposit new notes as they happen during their work.

When the team gathers for a Retrospective they can retrieve these treasures and discuss them.

Create a “Parking Lot” on the wall in the team area where they can post sticky notes during their work periods. These 3 questions can help them focus items that they post:

What did you learn during this Sprint/Cycle that you want to share with the team?

What did you learn during this Sprint/Cycle that you want to share with other teams?

How might your stakeholders help or support your team and how might dialogue with them be initiated?

I pitched these ideas to my team and they loved both and they decided to experiment with the 2nd above. On Day 2 of a recent Sprint, I was amazed to see how many ideas had been posted in just 2 days. Not only does it include learnings/challenges, but it also includes items that can integrated into our Definition of Done in the future.

Affiliated Promotions:

Try our automated online Scrum coach: Scrum Insight - free scores and basic advice, upgrade to get in-depth insight for your team. It takes between 8 and 11 minutes for each team member to fill in the survey, and your results are available immediately. Try it in your next retrospective.

Please share!

The team decides on how much work it will do in a Sprint. No one should bring pressure on the team to over-commit. This simply builds resentment, distrust and encourages low-quality work. That said, of course teams can be inspired by challenging overall project or product goals. A stretch goal for a Sprint is just a way to 100% guarantee failure. Even the team should not set its own stretch goals.

There are a few interesting principles that apply here. For example, the Agile Manifesto mentions sustainability:

Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.

The Agile Manifesto also points out the importance of trust:

Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.

Stretch goals are incompatible with both of these principles from the Agile Manifesto.

There are two types of stretch goals. The first type are those assigned by outsiders to the team. The second type are those which a team sets for itself. Both types are bad.

Stretch Goals Assigned by Outsiders

The worst extreme of this type of stretch goal is also the most common! This is the fixed-scope-fixed-date project deadline. In this type of stretch goal, the project team, doing Scrum or not, is forced to work backwards from the deadline to figure out how to get the work done. If the team can’t figure this out, managers often say things like “re-estimate” or “just get it done.” (Note: another thing that managers do in this situation is even worse: adding people to the project! Check out “The Mythical Man-Month” by F. Brooks for a great analysis of this problem.)

My anecdotal experience with this sort of thing is simple: quality suffers or sustainability suffers. I once worked with three other people on a mission critical project to help two banks with their merger. There was a regulatory deadline for completing the integration of the two existing systems for things like trading, etc. Fixed-scope-fixed-date. Coffee and sleepless nights were our solution since we tried not to sacrifice quality. We actually ended up working in my home for the last few 24-hour stretches so that we would have access to a shower. Suffice it to say, there’s no way we could have sustained that pace. It’s anti-Agile.

A quick search for ideas and opinions about stretch goals makes it very clear that there is no commonly agreed “correct” answer. However, from an Agile perspective stretch goals assigned by outsiders are clearly against the principles of the Agile Manifesto.

Stretch Goals Set by the Scrum Team

The number of items selected from the Product Backlog for the Sprint is solely up to the Development Team. Only the Development Team can assess what it can accomplish over the upcoming Sprint.

For emphasis: what it can accomplish – not what it (the Development Team) wants to accomplish, or what it should accomplish, or what it could accomplish if everything goes perfectly. A Development Team should be accomplishing their Sprint plan successfully (all Product Backlog Items done) on a regular basis. Of course, exceptional circumstances may intervene from time to time, but the team should be building trust with stakeholders. Here’s another story:

I had a good friend. We would always go out for coffee together. We just hung out – chatted about life, projects, relationships. Of course, from time-to-time one or the other of us would cancel our plans. That’s just life too. But there came a time when my friend started cancelling more often than not. There was always a good excuse: I’m sick, unexpected visitors, work emergency, whatever. After a little while of this I started to think that cancelling would be the default. I even got to the point where I was making alternative plans even if my friend and I had plans. I got to the point where I no longer trusted my friend. It didn’t matter that the excuses were always good. Trust was broken.

It doesn’t matter why a team fails to meet a goal. It reduces trust. It doesn’t matter why a team succeeds in meeting a goal. It builds trust. Even among team members. A team setting stretch goals is setting itself up for regular failure. Even if the team doesn’t share those stretch goals with outsiders.

Stretch goals destroy trust within the team.

Think about that. When a team fails to meet its own stretch goal, team members will start to look for someone to blame. People look for explanations, for stories. The team will create its own narrative about why a stretch goal was missed. If it happens over and over, that narrative will start to become doubt about the team’s own capacity either by pin-pointing an individual or in a gestalt team sense.

Trust and Agility

The importance of trust cannot be over-stated. In order for individuals to work effectively together, they must trust each other. How much trust? Well, the Agile Manifesto directly addresses trust:

Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need and trust them to get the job done.

Here is my recent YouTube video about stretch goals… check it out and subscribe to our channel!

Affiliated Promotions:

Try our automated online Scrum coach: Scrum Insight - free scores and basic advice, upgrade to get in-depth insight for your team. It takes between 8 and 11 minutes for each team member to fill in the survey, and your results are available immediately. Try it in your next retrospective.

Time: Teams that are writing code today that will be used by their customers tomorrow are very focused on what the customers actually need. Teams that are writing code today that won’t be seen by a customer for six months are less engaged.

Affiliated Promotions:

Try our automated online Scrum coach: Scrum Insight - free scores and basic advice, upgrade to get in-depth insight for your team. It takes between 8 and 11 minutes for each team member to fill in the survey, and your results are available immediately. Try it in your next retrospective.

The Product Owner is a full member of the Scrum Team and should be present at all Scrum meetings (Sprint Planning, Daily Scrums, Sprint Review and Sprint Retrospective). As well, the Product Owner should also be available during work time. Of course, the PO also needs to work with stakeholders and might be away during that time, but these discussions should be scheduled outside of the team’s meeting times.

In one case with a team I was coaching at Capital One, the Product Owner didn’t show up for the Sprint Review and then didn’t show up for the Sprint Planning meeting. The rest of the team decided to delay the start of the Sprint until the Product Owner did show up. The director-level manager of the team, a deeply insightful individual, insisted that all team members take paid days off until the Product Owner was ready to attend the Sprint Review… kind of like a mini-strike. It only took two days for the Product Owner to clear his schedule to attend the Sprint Planning meeting.

Product Owner as Scrum Team Member

The Scrum Team consists of a Product Owner, the Development Team, and a Scrum Master. Scrum Teams are self-organizing and cross-functional. Self-organizing teams choose how best to accomplish their work, rather than being directed by others outside the team…. The team model in Scrum is designed to optimize flexibility, creativity, and productivity.

As a member of the Scrum Team, the product owner should have the same level of commitment, courage, focus, openness, and respect (the five Scrum values) as any other Scrum Team member. The Product Owner needs to collaborate actively with the Scrum Team. One way to gauge the involvement of the Product Owner is in the Sprint Review. If the Product Owner is giving feedback to the rest of the Team in the Sprint Review, it’s too late! The Product Owner should never be surprised by the product increment shown in the Sprint Review. Instead, the Product Owner should be leading the discussion to get feedback from customers, users and other stakeholders during the Sprint Review.

Being Away from the Team

There are some interesting exceptions to the Product Owner being present. Here are some of the most common:

The Product Owner needs to be away from the team to work directly with customers, users, sales teams, marketing, customer service people, etc. This work is essential for making sure that the Product Backlog contains the most up-to-date information every Sprint. This time away should normally be scheduled outside of the Scrum meeting times.

The Product Owner may need to travel to meet with customers and be away from the Scrum Team for an extended period of time.

Of course, like any other team member, the Product Owner can and should take vacation and may be ill from time-to-time. This may seem trivially obvious. What is not obvious is that it often helps the team to leave another team member with temporary responsibility to fill in for the Product Owner. This temporary fill-in should not be someone from outside the team.

Special Case: The Daily Scrum Meeting

The latest version of the Scrum Guide also puts the Daily Scrum meeting in a special category. The meeting is for the Development Team (the subset of the Scrum Team that excludes the ScrumMaster and the Product Owner). Former versions of the Scrum Guide and other official Scrum documentation have changed this rule in various ways. As a personal comment, I believe this is a serious internal contradiction in the definition of Scrum. If the Scrum Team is self-organizing, then the Daily Scrum should include the ScrumMaster and Product Owner. I have seen this work successfully. The Scrum Guide says nothing about other people observing the Daily Scrum. I strongly recommend that the ScrumMaster and Product Owner observe the meeting even if you wish to follow Scrum strictly and restrict their participation.

If you decide to allow the Product Owner to participate in the meeting, then the Product Owner should restrict their comments to changes in the Product Backlog that require the team’s help for refinement. For example, the Product Owner could report in the Daily Scrum as follows:

“Yesterday I met with Sanjay at Deal Maker Industries and he suggested that we add a feature to allow car manufacturers to ping various stakeholders about risks and options. I think that will mean adding several new user stories to the Product Backlog. I need help from the team to write and estimate the new PBIs. Today I also have a re-prioritization meeting with three key internal stakeholders. My only obstacle is that I still can’t get a meeting with Karen about the marketing of the features from our last few Sprints and I’m worried that will delay our next release.”

In this example, the team and the ScrumMaster are kept apprised of key developments at the product level and know that there will be some extra work during the day to work on Product Backlog Refinement. The Scrum Guide says:

Product Backlog refinement is the act of adding detail, estimates, and order to items in the Product Backlog. This is an ongoing process in which the Product Owner and the Development Team collaborate on the details of Product Backlog items. During Product Backlog refinement, items are reviewed and revised. The Scrum Team decides how and when refinement is done. Refinement usually consumes no more than 10% of the capacity of the Development Team. However, Product Backlog items can be updated at any time by the Product Owner or at the Product Owner’s discretion.

Balance in the Product Owner Role

Ideally, the Product Owner would spend an equal amount of time with their Scrum Team and with outside customers and users. The Product Owner is the key conduit of information from the market to the Development Team. Not being present with the Scrum Team can hinder this flow of information and cause quality problems and unnecessary rework. Again, the Product Owner should never be surprised in the Sprint Review.

Affiliated Promotions:

Try our automated online Scrum coach: Scrum Insight - free scores and basic advice, upgrade to get in-depth insight for your team. It takes between 8 and 11 minutes for each team member to fill in the survey, and your results are available immediately. Try it in your next retrospective.

The ScrumMaster is like a fire-fighter: it’s okay for them to be idle – just watching the team – waiting for an emergency obstacle. Taking on tasks tends to distract the ScrumMaster from the job of helping the team follow the rules of Scrum, from the job of vigorously removing obstacles, and from the job of protecting the team from interruptions. Let’s look at each of these aspects of the ScrumMaster role in turn:

The ScrumMaster Helps the Team Follow the Rules of Scrum

The ScrumMaster is a process facilitator. The Scrum process, while simple to describe, is not easy to do. As the Scrum Guide says:

Scrum is:

Lightweight

Simple to understand

Difficult to master

The ScrumMaster helps the Scrum Team and the organization to master the Scrum framework. Helping everyone understand Scrum and respect its rules is a first step. Some of the rules are particularly challenging. In some companies, being on time for meetings and ending them on time is hard. Scrum requires this. The ScrumMaster helps the team do this. In some companies, meeting deadlines, even short ones, is difficult. Scrum requires this every Sprint. The ScrumMaster helps the team do this. In some companies, giving time to improving things is hard. Scrum Teams do retrospectives. The ScrumMaster ensures that the team takes the time for this.

Of course, following the rules is hard for people. Even just the concept of “rules” is hard for some people. Everyone has the right to do whatever they want. Well, if you aren’t following the rules of Scrum you aren’t doing Scrum. So for some teams, just getting to the point of being willing to follow the rules of Scrum is a big step. The ScrumMaster needs to help with motivation.

The ScrumMaster is Vigorously Removing Obstacles

The Scrum Team is going to be working hard to meet a goal for the Sprint. As they work, they are going to work through many challenges and problems on their own. However, the team will start to encounter obstacles as well. These obstacles or impediments come from a few sources:

Dependencies on other people or parts of the organization outside the Scrum Team.

Skill gaps within the team.

Burdensome bureaucracy imposed by the organization.

Lack of resources such as tools, equipment, licenses, or even access to funds.

The ScrumMaster needs to work through these.

On a panel talk on Saturday one person said “the scrum master is an administrator, moving cards, updating the burn down. It is an easy job, I think my son could do it.” I then rebutted his remarks….

The ScrumMaster will tackle enterprise operations for their slow error prone deployment process, tackle Sarbox [Sarbanes-Oxley] compliance policy that has been way over-engineered to the point of slowing dev to a crawl, telling the PMO that 3 sets of reports is waste, exhorting the team to try to do unit tests in ABAP (SAP cobol), etc.

The ScrumMaster is Protecting the Team from Interruptions

Every organization seems to have more work than their staff have the capacity to deliver. Staff are often asked to task switch repeatedly over the course of a day or even in a single hour. Sometimes people are “allocated” to multiple projects simultaneously. This breaks the Scrum value of focus. The ScrumMaster needs to protect the team from interruptions or anything else that would break their focus.

But what should the Scrum Team members be focused on? Simply: the goal of a single Sprint. And a single Scrum Team is focused on a single product. The Product Owner should be the point of contact for any and all requests for the time and effort of a Scrum Team. The ScrumMaster needs to re-direct any interruptions to the Product Owner. The Product Owner decides if:

the interruption results in a new Product Backlog Item, OR

the interruption is irrelevant to the product and simply discarded, OR

the interruption is important enough to cancel the current Sprint.

There are no other options in Scrum for handling requests for work from the Scrum Team (or any member of the Scrum Team).

Contribution as Distraction for the ScrumMaster

Any time the ScrumMaster starts to contribute to the product development effort directly, the ScrumMaster is distracted from the other three duties. Although simple, following the rules of Scrum is not easy. Getting distracted from the duty of helping the team follow the rules of Scrum means that the team is likely to develop bad habits or regress to non-Scrum behaviour. Vigorously removing obstacles is usually a huge job all on its own. Most Scrum Teams have huge organizational obstacle that must be worked on. Some of these obstacles will take years of persistent effort to deal with. The ScrumMaster cannot become distracted by tactical details of product development. Protecting the team from interruptions means the ScrumMaster must have broad awareness, at all times, of what is happening with the team. If a team member is interrupted by a phone call, an email, or someone walking into the Scrum team room, the ScrumMaster needs to notice it immediately.

Whenever a ScrumMaster takes on a product development task, focus on the role is lost and a condition of a simple conflict-of-interest is created. If the team has “committed” to deliver certain Product Backlog Items at the end of a Sprint, then that feeling of commitment may lead a ScrumMaster to focusing on the wrong things.

The time of a ScrumMaster is an investment in continuous improvement. Letting a ScrumMaster contribute to the work of the team dilutes that investment.

Affiliated Promotions:

Try our automated online Scrum coach: Scrum Insight - free scores and basic advice, upgrade to get in-depth insight for your team. It takes between 8 and 11 minutes for each team member to fill in the survey, and your results are available immediately. Try it in your next retrospective.